Google to Invest 15 Billion Dollars in Malaysia Data Centres

Google has set out a plan to invest 15 billion US dollars in Malaysia during 2027 and 2028, in one of the largest single technology commitments the country has received. The company announced the plan on November 4, in the presence of Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim. The money covers new data centre campuses, clean energy, water infrastructure and training, and it builds on the 2 billion dollar investment Google announced on May 30, 2024 for its first Malaysian data centre and cloud region.

That first campus, at Elmina Business Park in Selangor, is now operating, Google said. New campuses are planned in Selangor and Negeri Sembilan. Computing capacity in Selangor will support the Google Cloud region the company is preparing for enterprise customers in Malaysia. More than 80 Malaysian companies are already working in the supply chain behind the build, across construction, network equipment, power and cooling systems, logistics and services.

Power and water come with the buildings

Google said it plans to bring more than 1 gigawatt of new clean energy capacity to Malaysia's national grid, working with the utility Tenaga Nasional Berhad under the Corporate Renewable Energy Supply Scheme. The company said it will pay for the electricity its campuses use and for the direct cost of connecting them to the grid. It put the power usage effectiveness of its Malaysian campuses at 1.12 to 1.14, against an industry average of 1.54.

On water, Google announced on November 2 a contribution of 160 million dollars toward shared water infrastructure in Negeri Sembilan. Gamuda Berhad will build an off river storage reservoir and a treatment plant on the Linggi River. The facility will supply the public system as well as Google's planned Springhill Industrial Park campus in Port Dickson, with a supply capacity of 65 million litres a day.

Jobs, training and the AI Cities invitation

Construction in 2027 and 2028 is expected to support more than 37,000 local jobs a year, contribute an average of 1.1 billion dollars a year to Malaysian GDP and generate 378 million dollars a year in labour income, Google said. The training plan aims to raise the skills of about 800,000 Malaysians by 2031, and Google plans Data Center Institutes at polytechnics in Selangor and Negeri Sembilan.

The government is already asking for more. On November 5, Digital Minister Gobind Singh Deo invited Google to work with Malaysia on AI Cities and on artificial intelligence safety, as the country pursues its aim of becoming an AI Nation by 2030. No funding commitment from Google toward AI Cities has been announced.

Why it matters

The commitment is a plan for future spending, not finished construction, and Google has not published a breakdown of the 15 billion dollars across campuses, power, water and training. Even so, the shape of the deal is clear: Malaysia is trading land, power and water access for jobs, grid investment and a place in the region's AI build out, and Google is securing capacity in a market where demand for computing keeps rising. Ruth Porat, president and chief investment officer of Alphabet and Google, said the plan was meant to provide, in her words, the foundational computing capacity to deliver the upside of innovation across the country while adding local power and water resources as operations scale.